KANTABANJI: Tension prevailed in Kantabanji town on Friday when Kantabanji MLA Santosh Singh Saluja and his supporters reportedly prevented the police from producing the 22 arrested labour contractors and three others in court.A special squad of district police arrested 22 labour contractors of Andhra Pradesh from different lodges here on Thursday. They were engaged in illegally recruiting workers from Balangir district to serve in brick kilns in the neighbouring state.Two lodge owners and a manager have also been arrested besides an associate of a labour contractor.Reports said a special squad of Balangir Police led by Inspector Ranjan Patnaik swooped down on three lodges here and arrested the 22 middlemen. While the owner of Alishan Lodge, Kishan Kumar Agarwal managed to escape, police arrested its manager Narendra Kumar Bhoi and owners of Annapurna and Sri Ganesh Lodges, Ratan Sharma and Sushil Agarwal respectively.While the 22 were arrested from Alishan, 14 others, who had put up in Annapurna Lodge, managed to escape.The owner has been charged with harbouring them in their hotel without valid documents while the owner of Sri Ganesh Lodge is into manufacturing brick mould and reportedly involved in human trafficking.On Friday when the police were preparing to take the arrested to court, Saluja and his supporters, reportedly stormed the police station and attempted to get those arrested released.Police claimed that Saluja blocked them from producing the arrested in court and gheraoed the station. They police were contemplating arresting Saluja.The MLA’s action forced police to resort to mild lathicharge to disperse the crowd. In the melee that followed, owners of the two lodges managed to escape along with one A Narsinghalu.Saluja accused the police of terrorising innocent people. He said all those arrested have valid licence to recruit labourers and were arrested illegally.Balangir Additional SP Srikant Mishra, who is at Kantabanji police station said the situation is tense but under control.
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